If you have a small group, you’ll only need one sprinkle bowl for each type of sprinkle. But if you have more than four kids decorating, I recommend more bowls (or muffin cups) to go around!
There are so many festive sprinkles and decorations available, but here are some of the best multi-packs for each holiday:
- Christmas holiday sprinkles set. With red and green sugars, nonpareils, and jimmies this is perfect for Christmastime!
- Wilton holiday snow sprinkles set. This set has white and blue sprinkles, sugar, snowmen, nonpareils, and tiny white snowflakes.
- Valentine’s Day sprinkles set. With eight different pink and red sprinkle varieties to choose from, this is a really fun set!
- Easter sprinkles mutipack. This pastel sprinkles set has six sprinkle options, including two sugars, tiny bunny heads and miniature egg shapes.
- Halloween sprinkles variety pack. With black and orange sugars, purple, green and orange jimmies, ghosts, nonpareils, and polkadots, your kids will love these sprinkles!
3. Prepare the area to get ready to decorate sugar cookies
Once you’ve got your frosting and sprinkles ready, it’s time to get the decorating area ready.
You’ll want to decorate your cookies at a table – preferably a large one!
But before you get the table ready, take a minute to think about your floors under and around the table.
If you have rugs, pick them up or roll them out of the way to save yourself extra clean up time later.
Also, if you have floors that are sparkling (teach me your ways, please!) and you don’t want to sweep or mop again right away, consider putting down an inexpensive plastic tablecloth under your table.
When the decorating is finished, you can quickly roll up the plastic tablecloth from the floor and throw it away.
4. Prep the table(s)
The next thing to do to get ready to decorate sugar cookies with your kids is to prep the table or tables.
The number of kids that will be decorating and the size of your table will determine the number of tables you’ll need.
Keep in mind that you want to have plenty of elbow room for everyone.
It’s a great idea to cover your entire table with a simple plastic tablecloth like this. There are so many festive colors you can choose from!
You may consider taping the tablecloth to the underside of your table to make sure it doesn’t move around!
Once your tablecloth is on and secure, you’ll want to set up individual cookie decorating stations for each child.
Each cookie decorating place setting should have these things:
- a stack of your delightful plain sugar cookies
- 2 large paper plates – one for decorating and another for finished creations
- small paper cups or bowls of different sprinkles and festive decorations
- several bags of frosting
- several plastic knives
5. Turn on some festive music
Before you call the kids to come and decorate their sugar cookies, take a quick minute to turn on some festive music!
It is a simple touch that will add a lot of ambience to your whole cookie decorating experience!
Steps 6-7 to get ready to decorate sugar cookies with kids
After you’ve got the table or tables prepped and your mood music on, it’s time to call the kids!
Before you let them dive in and start decorating, here are a few more tips to consider:
6. Prepare the kids
Before the kids jump in and start decorating, you will want to have them do two important things:
- wash their hands
- put on an apron – these inexpensive aprons are great for cooking, baking and art projects too!
While you (hopefully) have everyone’s captive attention, you might want to share a few ground rules for everyone to follow.
Some ideas might be:
- everyone needs to help clean up at the end of the decorating
- anything dropped on the floor stays on the floor
- only use your own sprinkles and decorations – this is especially important when you’re trying to keep the spread of germs to a minimum
- if you break a cookie, you have to eat it (maybe up to two cookies?!)
7. Demonstrate how to decorate a sugar cookie
After sharing a few quick rules for decorating sugar cookies, you may want to give the kids a quick tutorial.
Show them how to spread the frosting and how a few sprinkles can go a long way!
You may also allow them to practice using the frosting bags as they pipe onto the table. This will help them get the feel for it before they put any frosting on their cookies.
Steps 8-11 how to let yourself enjoy decorating cookies with kids
While steps 1-7 for getting ready to decorate sugar cookies with kids may seem like a lot of work, steps 8-11 can be even harder if you’re a perfectionist mom!
Read on to find out what I mean.
8. Let kids get creative
Oftentimes kids come up with some really great ideas that we’d never think of as adults.
So if your kid wants to frost a snowflake cookie in silver and call it a ninja star, that’s okay!
You may even encourage them to all think outside of the box and decorate one cookie as something completely different than its shape.
9. Don’t worry about the mess
Remember, you did all the prep work you could to keep messes to a minimum.
But they’re still gonna happen.
Prepare yourself now! And remember, frosting and cookies can be cleaned up and rarely ever cause lasting damage.
10. Let go of perfection
It may be really tempting to swoop in and help your kids’ cookies look better than they do.
But try to resist this urge that is so normal for many mamas!
Let your kids be proud of their own work – even if it isn’t as good as the work you’d have done.
Certainly you can give them pointers, or help them if they ask for it, but in general, let them do their own work!
11. Take photos and enjoy
Be sure to take lots of photos and short videos of your cookie decorating experience.
Kids absolutely love the small things we do to make traditions like sugar cookie decorating special for them.
Final thoughts on how to get ready to decorate sugar cookies with kids
I hope you’ll love the time you spend decorating cookies with your kids – whether you do it for every holiday throughout the year or just at Christmastime!
Remember, when you take the time to get ready to decorate sugar cookies, you’ll be able to have a more pleasant, less stressful, and less messy experience for everyone!
Now what mama would want that?
And before you go, be sure to grab the cute Santa letter template from the Free Printables library. (Your kids could use it to leave a little note for Santa with his plate of cookies and milk!)
Additional articles about fun Christmas family traditions:
–13 Awesome Christmas Traditions for Families You Must Try This Year
–35 Easy Last Minute Elf on the Shelf Ideas Your Kids Will Love
–21 Awesome Christmas Books for Kids You Need to Read This Year
–How We Practice Intentional Christmas Gift Giving
